Family
Don’t Blame Foster Care
The system has flaws, but Ma’Khia Bryant’s problems began long before she entered it.
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When it became clear that even the most sympathetic observers would have a hard time blaming the police for the death of Ma’Khia Bryant—whom an officer shot and killed as she was about to stab another girl with a knife—activists instead turned their ire on the foster care system.
Bryant was living with her sister in what was apparently a neglectful, and possibly violent, foster home at the time of her death. Indeed, the fight she was engaged in when she was shot may have involved a former resident at the home; one report claims that the foster mother may have even asked the other girl to fight Bryant. Since 2018, according to records obtained by the